Part of the late-50s wave of American indies that included works by emerging directors John Cassavetes, John Newland and Joseph Strick, Engel's film won the Pasinetti Award at the 1958 Venice Film Festival and tells the story of a New York City couple who have differing ideas on where to take their relationship and whose own drama is intruded upon by those of the boyfriend's septuagenarian mother.

Watch this at some point before the 30th of March when we will all get together and discuss. I want this to be the biggest Class Trip yet, so get the word out and buzz in here if you're interested in signing up.

Available here. I will try to get it on Dropbox sometime this week if I can figure out how to use it.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

Everyone should watch it by next weekend. Also, where's Shield? I think she's the only one whose been in for the majority of Class Trips who hasn't hosted one yet. Unless we get tons of new blood this time maybe we should give it to her as courtesy if she watches this one.

Like his two previous films, "The Little Fugitive" and "Lovers and Lollipops," this one is done in a highly distinctive and often impressive off-the-cuff photographic style. It is so seemingly casual and impromptu, so evidently uncontrived, both in story development and in the manner in which the shots are made and arranged, that it might be seriously labeled the "method" way of making a film.

This accounts for some suddenly exquisite and isolatedly eloquent little bits in Mr. Engel's picture, for which we understand he conceived the story and served as producer, director and camera man.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

Someone put it on YouTube or Dropbox so I don't have to spend more KG ratio

I echo this sentiment.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

I wasn't all that impressed, overall. It worked best when Engel actually directed (what were essentially montage segments) and the actors weren't improvising dramatic dialogue, although the silly birthday party stuff seemed a lot more natural, like that was more scripted and/or reliant on the actors' strengths.

I enjoyed it but I feel like it was crying out for an extra half-hour. Just a bit more time to let the drama develop and the characters to reveal some layers because as it is I think it speaks as if it had more to say than it does. The women are captivating presences, either when they're acting in Lindfors' case or just being themselves in Barile's. I wish he'd wrung some heftier emotional returns out of Barile's journey to her gravesite.

It looks gorgeous and you can really feel Engel's particular essence du NY, especially in the deep focus scenes at the festival where you can see the Manhattan skyline in the distance. And it is put together in a refreshingly loose style which unfortunately does short circuit a bit when it's made to link together mundane exchange after mundane exchange. I think its biggest crime is that it hasn't given me more to say about it.

There are definitely moments where it impresses with its imagery, yeah. I don't feel like going through the file to take caps right now, but I'm reminded of several moments where light streams in from the top of the frame and backlights characters.

I'm sure charu would have taken part had she not already seen the film, Das had seen last round's film, The Butcher's at boot camp and Shieldmaiden would probably be in but she's been AWOL lately. We might have been unlucky just for the past few rounds, I'm keen to keep this up.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

I thought it was okay. The film was mostly at its best when nobody was opening their mouths; chunks of the 'emotional' dialogue were distractingly shoddy. "I feel like I'm crawling..." "What happened to us?" "Don't you love me?" and all that shit about midway through was the particular low point. But then they followed it up with the wandering old-lady montage - social security, praying in the church etc. - which was really good stuff. (Most of the old-lady and festival stuff was good.) Favourite stray observation: "I wonder what Freud would say about all this?" closely followed by this shot:

That was nice. There was a lot of intentionally Freudian stuff in there (inevitable with mother/marriage), but I don't really have much else to say on it.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

You pick an interesting-looking film that you haven't seen and that you doubt many if any other Corrie posters have seen, post about it on a Saturday and then we all watch it and discuss it the next Saturday.

_________________"I thought, well, heaven, all that marble and giltwork, sounds a bit middle class. I would prefer something that was, I don't know, carpeted and had skirting boards, things like that." — Alan Moore

I watched it and I can't think of much to say about it. My primary reaction was to find the characters extremely irritating, but I decided that this was intentional since it was amusing enough watching them prattle on about nothing. Until about 50 minutes into the film, that is, when I lost interest.

The inclusion of the mother was an intriguing idea, but it felt as if the film was relying on the mere presence of this element to induce gravitas and forgot to really do anything with it. This is me trying to justify how disengaged I felt by the film's end when I could have just quoted snapper's line concerning "heftier emotional returns" and responded with an "I agree".

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